CTC supports calls for tougher driver testing process

Drivers licences should last for 5 years then you should have to retake the test.

There should be a personality test before anything else. There are some vicious, nasty psychopaths out there who will happily glass you for catching your eye in the pub, or beat their wife for being late with dinner. Strangely enough they're not nice, calm, courteous drivers.
A conviction for violence should mean a driving ban.
A few years ago the government mentioned driving bans for burglars, mainly to prevent them travelling to commit crime. Needless to say that never happened, one argument against being someone who'll commit one type of crime is hardly likely to care about committing another - driving while disqualified or unlicensed. Which leads to another current problem. Driving while disqualified is not treated anywhere near harshly enough (like all other crimes, to be fair).

The CTC report looks flawed. It seems to suggest that because young drivers are involved in more KSI (Killed or Seriously Injured) collisions than older drivers, that somehow they are a greater risk to cyclists. CTC needs to look more closely at the data. If they did, they would recognise that young drivers kill and injure themselves and others generally at night, at times and in places where there are no cyclists.

I'd like to see CTC reference much more specific research before they make these pronouncements. The figures on the KSI by age/gender graph are ridiculously high too, suggesting that UK suffered 15 to 20 million KSI casualties per year!!

Please CTC, if you are going to try to make a serious campaigning point, do it from robust analysis, rather than bias confirmatory assumption.

I agree with KitKat. A compulsory assessment would make sense - and create more of the jobs poor old SideSaddle is looking for.

Women drivers? As bad as men. Especially speeding in 30mph areas.

I worry a little about the standards of some driving instructors as well. I often see them instructing at 31mph and found one parked on double yellow lines on a blind bend recently - probably giving an example of how not to park?

As I've been droning about on this site for years speed is the key factor. Once it becomes unacceptable to speed in built up areas cycling will surge.

Young motorbike riders have to undertake Compulsory Basic Training as a part of their driving test. It would make a neat detail, already available as a provided facility, of a network of cycle trainers across the UK to require a Bikeability 3 level of competence as a prerequisite for taking a driving test, and where the candidate cannot ride a bicycle the training can be undertaken on a tricycle or equivalent machine.

It might also be useful to look at the options open for managing the issue of vocational licences (C, D, E categories), where the licence can be revoked if the person is judged not to be a fit person. Having just read of a driver in court for assault of a school crossing patrol attendant, and her 'previous' of violence, and being sectioned under mental health legislation, one wonders whether such controls should be extended to those holding C1, D1, and E1 licences.

I would much rather see a compulsory 'competency review' of driving every 5-10 years. While young drivers aren't a shining beacon of driving ability most of my tut moments are with drivers over the age 30.

A regular review of driving ability would have two aims:
1. Ensure people are medically fit to drive

2. Asses driving ability, give critical feedback on driving skills and address those if required.

A good lesson for me was doing my motorbike test having passed my driving test 15 years earlier. It certainly sharpened my road craft having an instructor pointing out all my bad habits I'd picked up with 15 years of doing my own thing and that was with me coming from a cyclist background.

Well it would certainly free up roads eventually....conservatively, £20 an hour lesson thats, £2400...

Im 22, a member of the young male population, a sensible driver and a cyclist...Not a good suggestion and one that does cyclists as a community no good in the long run...imo.

We already have one of the most stringent tests in the world and the one of the most oppressive as far as regulations and laws are concerned. Put a young person behind a wheel (male or female) and on the whole they will drive badly, it's exiting.
Look at your own driving, do you obey speed limits or are you a good driver who doesn't need to? Of course they are for other people.
It comes back to sanctions, few traffic police on the road, speed cameras painted bright yellow so only the registered blind or complete idiots get caught. Suspended sentence for killing someone through careless/dangerous driving?
One more law to be ignored.

It seems that one section of society is dedicated to preventing another section from enjoying any of what have come to be called 'privileges' that the rest of us enjoyed in better times. Driving is not even slightly difficult. It is not the equivalent of A-levels, it is simply a means to get from house A to work B. Without a car the chance of getting one of the hugely diminished number of decent jobs is vanishingly low.

Having only just returned to 4 wheels after 2 years of no decent job for the above reason I frankly never really want to see a bicycle again. Mine did me no favours as I ploughed through the wind and rain to get to the 'Jobcentre'. Didn't see many of you lot out there last winter either.

I passed my driving test after 2 proper lessons and a tour of Scotland with a mate. I didn't hit anything or anyone then and I haven't since. I'm not alone: this country has the best accident statistics in the world and it's about time we gave ourselves a pat on the back for a change instead of this continual sad navel-gazing which will eventually bring the whole place to dayglo ruin.

Haha, love the image. More of this sort of thing please.

Wow, head over to the CTC site to see that graph which really does illustrate the need for younger drivers to face tougher testing. That said I do wonder that no matter how tough the tests, the young male population are still likely to ignore all they have been taught (just look at the graph now for young male and female). What would reduce this would be tougher penalties or better still their lovely boy racer cars were keyed by passing cyclists whilst policemen hold them back